One big negative on C#. Your code ends up looking like Visual Basic.
You end up with single files with massive amounts of code. I've seen C# files with thousands of lines of code. Each button, each rule for the button etc. and they are not grouped by any rhyme or reason. The are simply tacked on the bottom as the next function. Thankfully Visual studio helps you find everything.

Makes code walk throughs either hit or miss (did we go through all the functions on that button?) or scatter brained (function 1 - start button, function 2 - dialog box, funtion 3 - menu item).

Long range RFID is pretty much 900Mhz (ish). To get the chip to work at ultra low power levels it has to be pretty small. We are not talking Intel top of the line foundry but 90nm or better. Bottom line, no way to print that chip.

As for the antenna - you can print that but the variations in printing (like 1/64 of an inch makes attaching chips more expensive. The attach costs they are targeting is .25 of a cent per antenna. To achieve these numbers speed is king.

Also, for maximum performance (best antenna tuning) ink technologies don't work so well. I believe most are chemically etched now.

So you can expect the cheapest RFID tags to be around 10 c. Bigger ones cost more (but can be read farther away).

Both, wrong... you less so.

The credit cards use an induction form of RFID. The wavelengths in question are very long - would require a big antenna to transmitt and an equally big antenna on the card to receive.... well the cards aren't big enough. So you see this spiral pattern (inductive loop) that is the antenna.
YAGI won't do it. You need something more along the lines of the magnetic sensors as you leave a store (EAS - Electronic Article surveillance).

Credit cards are 13.56 MHz RFID. That's a wavelength of ~75ft. Not going to hide that YAGI very well....

Nope, inductive loops. That's why it only works over about a meter because the strengths of the magnetic fields.

A big magnetic field... or a choke point, like a door to the conference center.

The RFID technology used in credit cards is more based on magnetic fields than electric fields. As such, stacking the cards doesn't help. The magnetic ones were somehow assumed to be more secure because they can only be read from a few inches away. Then again, store security systems use magnetic fields as well and they can read at least 4 ft away.

A Faraday cage is one defense.

Or, burn out the chip and just use the magnetic stripe (best defense). I have yet to use one of these no-contact credit card readers and have never even found a need for it. Technology that makes me less safe.... correction, makes my credit card company more expensive/less safe.

If you look at the data and read the report you will note that 40G is the maximum that can be recorded by the black box. More importantly it was only instantanious reading. Most likely a vibration, not a sustained 40G. Peak deceleration, according to the data, was more on the order of 16G, and even then, only for a few milliseconds.

Air force pilots have sustained 9+ G's during manuevers and stunt pilots + or - 9Gs.

According to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force
100Gs, in short duration, is survivable in car accidents.

Its unclear when the black box stopped recording. But it had a peak of -16G (smoothed average) and it increase almost linearly for 70ms.
So 1G = 32 ft/sec^2. So its a triangle with the area (1/2bh): .070 * 32 * 16 /2 and you have a total velocity change of 17.92 ft/sec or 12 mph.

I see nothing on this plot that would indicate that the car was traveling at any higher speed. Did I miss it?

Note at the beginning of the document it says something like 24mph - which is probably a better estimate than me assuming its a triangle and it take into account all the data, not just the uptick at the end.

Still, no where near 105mph.

Not sure what you define as average. The average Toyota? sure 80mph it will probably rattle the wheels off. The car in question is a Crown Vic which was bought via the police department (police service package?). It would probably have been equipped with high performance black wall tires and almoust undoubtably a V-8 (I think about 300hp). Further more, the car was probably maintained by the same mechanics that maintain the police car fleet. In my opinion, most Fords have numb steering which only gets worse with age, but in this case, I would assume it was maintianed in good condition. Bottom line, 80mph on a highway is not a big deal (depends of course on the highway and conditions). The big German car makers (Audi, Mercedes, BMW) often argue against speed limits on the Autobahn because it would water down the need for performance sedans. These cars are often limited by their computer to 155 or 165mph.

Elwood: "It's got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it's got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks." (err., OK 4.6liter motor)

Depends where the computer got its data.
If the data came from the same speed sensor the car's speedometer uses (a sensor on the transmission), then the moment the car left the road the rear wheels would be spinning on grass or whatever else he was traveling over.

If the black box used the input from the ABS system, that should be based on 3 or 4 sensor that measure actual wheel speed.

Typically the black boxes record the last 5 or 10 seconds before an air-bag deployment event. 5 seconds would be a long time at 75mph (~100 ft per second). So you should be able to trend the data and correspond that with the maximum acceleration of the car.

I suspect a 300hp Crown Vic would take quite some time to go from 75mph to 105... like 10 seconds. I base this on the belief that the car's 0-100 times are on the order of 17 seconds (and I suspect never reaching 100mph in those 17 seconds).

I didn't destroy the black box, the tow truck driver or yard in which the car was parked for a couple weeks must have done it.

The "black box" is typically part of the air-bag system (determines when to deploy so it measure G-forces, speeds etc.)
On older GM cars its typically under the driver's seat. If you smash the main computer (again, older vehicles behind the dash, more comonly now in the engine compartment) you will be breaking the wrong box.

Just remove the airbags and install real seat belts. (note both of these are illegal. As for installing good seatbelts, you must keep the old, DOT approved, ones intact to remain legal.) Air bags, are part of 'passive restaints' that, despite what is advertised, is made for dopes that don't use seat belts. DOT approved seat belts are designed for comfort, not protect. They are much too narrow for the speeds and energies that you could see at highway speeds.

My best notes were actually in pen.... more precisely a multi-colored pen. Black for subject headings, blue for text, green for examples, red for important stuff. I have very good memory recall for things like that and it worked well for me. A combination of actually writing down the notes, plus a vivid image in my head what the notes looked like, I found it really easy to recall exactly where in my notes a subject was covered.
The problem I have with electronic note taking is that I have little concept on approximately where in my notes something is.. Was it on page 10, 20 or 30? With a physical notepad, I always had a rough idea.
Of course I'm older, and my brain never grew up on I-pads.

Contestants (be it cars, people whatever) have an RFID tag (probably passive, 900Mhz RFID) in a name tag or other tag (tag on dash of car) that will give you decent interval timing.

For the finish line, or where timing is more critical, you can supplement with a camera (photo finish if you will).

900Mhz RFID is typically good for 15+ feet (depending on the size of the tag) and can be used reliably up to about 45 feet (big tag on big metal object - like a rail car). Tags can be very cheap - about 25 cents. To 'track humans' you need to keep the tags off the skin (skin detunes/absorbes RF energy) so you need a slightly thicker name tag (foam backed) for reliable reading at range.

Oh, and its already been done. I believe runners right now use a low frequency RFID tag tied to their shoe laces and they have to run over a mat. Low frequency RFID is based more on magnetic fields - thus short range only.

As for cheating, the top competitors in a marathon are watched pretty carfully and their are lots of witnesses. The people running it for themselves.... well who cares if they cheat. Sorta like using an aim-bot on single player mode.

Its not necessarily anti-French, its probably more anti-Paris, and from the attitudes in Paris the feeling is mutual. Go a few kilometers outside the city and suddenly is friendly.

Ah yes, Charles de Gaulle. When he got France out of NATO, and told US President Johnson that he wanted all US troops out of France, Johnson ask "Does that include the ones buried there?"

French view of history seems to be very myopic.